Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Graduation Thoughts
May 15, 2010
9:43pm
Home
I am sentimental. If you know me, you know this. It can be a reasonable sentimentality – buying presents for friends you may not see for a while – and it can be a peculiar sentimentality. Once my girlfriend left a leaf in my apartment with a note attached that read: Why do we pick up some leaves and not others? I still have the note; reasonable. I also still have the leaf; peculiar. It has long since lost its luster and wilted in my apartment but I kept it around, in plain view right next to the note.
I am also sentimental at the wrong times. Either way before or way after I should be.
I have spent almost the entire day of my graduation not thinking about it. I got up early, washed off the mild hangover, dressed to the high-eights and went through all the motions of the day. I didn’t try to convince myself that it was or wasn’t important, and while it felt a little like both, it didn’t feel a lot like either.
And so Tom Brokaw gave a speech that started out strong, then started to wander, President Sally Mason shook my freshly Purell’d hand and said, “Congratulations,” and I sat down to talk to the girl next to me about the things you talk about with fellow graduates, which, fortunately, does not include the question: what are you going to do? This is not a question graduates ask each other.
While sitting silently with Maggie in the backseat of my mom’s truck on the way to the customary post-ceremony meal, I confessed to her that sitting and watching people decorated with multiple honors cords and safety pinning patches filled with stars to their $19.95 gowns makes one feel a bit like a schmuck. Walking at graduation is really only cool if you are one of these people. She said that’s why she had wanted to walk; she would have been one of those people.
The sentiment I’ve felt since the day I fixed the tassel to my cap and tried it on in the mirror is simple: I didn’t work hard enough for this. There are people who have gotten to this point only after extreme academic rigor and hardships without parallel - I’ll never forget the way Maggie cried while trying to write her honors thesis after her dad’s stroke. It may seem trivial, but those safety pinned star patches and cheap looking cords come to mean something, and when they get to that podium and the speaker announces all their achievements, I know that felt good. When I got to the podium, the highest honor I got was the speaker pronouncing my name right.
To be counted among these people, these real scholars, when I was just some sucker who took an extra year to finish college was…well, sickening. That should have been me. I should have excelled. The waking up early and the dry sausage McMuffin and the cheap cap and gown and 3 hour ceremony would have meant so much more if it had happened with highest distinction. With honors. But I had no distinction. I was not honorable. I was Bryan Murray and I had graduated college and that was it. What a sucker.
People keep asking me if I’m excited and telling me to be excited and wondering why I’m not excited and this is the reason. It’s not the best, nor is it the worst. It’s just me wishing I was more worthy. Me wishing I had lived up to my potential. But in feeling sorry for myself I forget that not too long ago, I was sitting on the hood of my grandmother’s Thunderbird in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sweater, wearing shades and looking at the sky. I was with my cousin and my brother, and my dad thought it was cute, so he took a picture. Not too long ago, I was my dad’s little guy, who loved Nintendo and laughed too loud. Now I’m sitting in a gown that doesn’t look so cheap from far away, moving my tassel from the right to the left and it’s the proudest moment in his life.
Sometimes, we walk for ourselves, but often we walk for our parents. To see you walk across that stage for a few seconds on that blurry JumboVision screen is validation that no matter how many mistakes they made, they must have did okay. It’s years of every emotion taken to its extreme wrapped up into 12 steps, a shaken hand, and maybe a shout from the crowd. As I sat in my seat, twisting my name card around in my hands, I realized that it doesn’t matter if I feel like I didn’t do enough to get here. This wasn’t for me. This was for my mom in the farthest row, holding my littlest sister in her arms. This was for my dad, sitting in an office room in Barbados as his heart silently broke at not being able to make it. This was diapers to pullups to overalls to flattops to flag football to AP English to black gowns and white tassels. This was little Bryan, all grown up and I can’t imagine how happy it must have made them.
And so now that’s it’s too late, I can let the delayed sentimentality coax tears onto my cheeks. Now that I’ve already hugged my mom goodbye before she starts the 16-hour drive back to Georgia, I can verbalize how much everything she’s done for me contributed to this moment. Now that I’ve already met Maggie’s enthusiasm with a taciturn indifference, I can see why she wanted to live this moment through me. Now that I’ve dismissed my own graduation as not a big deal, I realize that it really is.
It’s still hard to feel super accomplished, and moving a dangling bunch of strings from one side of a funny hat to the other does not a new man make, but after the ceremony, walking up to my mom and seeing her eyes all messy and smiling, I can’t help but feel a little bit of pride in being the reason for that joy.
9:43pm
Home
I am sentimental. If you know me, you know this. It can be a reasonable sentimentality – buying presents for friends you may not see for a while – and it can be a peculiar sentimentality. Once my girlfriend left a leaf in my apartment with a note attached that read: Why do we pick up some leaves and not others? I still have the note; reasonable. I also still have the leaf; peculiar. It has long since lost its luster and wilted in my apartment but I kept it around, in plain view right next to the note.
I am also sentimental at the wrong times. Either way before or way after I should be.
I have spent almost the entire day of my graduation not thinking about it. I got up early, washed off the mild hangover, dressed to the high-eights and went through all the motions of the day. I didn’t try to convince myself that it was or wasn’t important, and while it felt a little like both, it didn’t feel a lot like either.
And so Tom Brokaw gave a speech that started out strong, then started to wander, President Sally Mason shook my freshly Purell’d hand and said, “Congratulations,” and I sat down to talk to the girl next to me about the things you talk about with fellow graduates, which, fortunately, does not include the question: what are you going to do? This is not a question graduates ask each other.
While sitting silently with Maggie in the backseat of my mom’s truck on the way to the customary post-ceremony meal, I confessed to her that sitting and watching people decorated with multiple honors cords and safety pinning patches filled with stars to their $19.95 gowns makes one feel a bit like a schmuck. Walking at graduation is really only cool if you are one of these people. She said that’s why she had wanted to walk; she would have been one of those people.
The sentiment I’ve felt since the day I fixed the tassel to my cap and tried it on in the mirror is simple: I didn’t work hard enough for this. There are people who have gotten to this point only after extreme academic rigor and hardships without parallel - I’ll never forget the way Maggie cried while trying to write her honors thesis after her dad’s stroke. It may seem trivial, but those safety pinned star patches and cheap looking cords come to mean something, and when they get to that podium and the speaker announces all their achievements, I know that felt good. When I got to the podium, the highest honor I got was the speaker pronouncing my name right.
To be counted among these people, these real scholars, when I was just some sucker who took an extra year to finish college was…well, sickening. That should have been me. I should have excelled. The waking up early and the dry sausage McMuffin and the cheap cap and gown and 3 hour ceremony would have meant so much more if it had happened with highest distinction. With honors. But I had no distinction. I was not honorable. I was Bryan Murray and I had graduated college and that was it. What a sucker.
People keep asking me if I’m excited and telling me to be excited and wondering why I’m not excited and this is the reason. It’s not the best, nor is it the worst. It’s just me wishing I was more worthy. Me wishing I had lived up to my potential. But in feeling sorry for myself I forget that not too long ago, I was sitting on the hood of my grandmother’s Thunderbird in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sweater, wearing shades and looking at the sky. I was with my cousin and my brother, and my dad thought it was cute, so he took a picture. Not too long ago, I was my dad’s little guy, who loved Nintendo and laughed too loud. Now I’m sitting in a gown that doesn’t look so cheap from far away, moving my tassel from the right to the left and it’s the proudest moment in his life.
Sometimes, we walk for ourselves, but often we walk for our parents. To see you walk across that stage for a few seconds on that blurry JumboVision screen is validation that no matter how many mistakes they made, they must have did okay. It’s years of every emotion taken to its extreme wrapped up into 12 steps, a shaken hand, and maybe a shout from the crowd. As I sat in my seat, twisting my name card around in my hands, I realized that it doesn’t matter if I feel like I didn’t do enough to get here. This wasn’t for me. This was for my mom in the farthest row, holding my littlest sister in her arms. This was for my dad, sitting in an office room in Barbados as his heart silently broke at not being able to make it. This was diapers to pullups to overalls to flattops to flag football to AP English to black gowns and white tassels. This was little Bryan, all grown up and I can’t imagine how happy it must have made them.
And so now that’s it’s too late, I can let the delayed sentimentality coax tears onto my cheeks. Now that I’ve already hugged my mom goodbye before she starts the 16-hour drive back to Georgia, I can verbalize how much everything she’s done for me contributed to this moment. Now that I’ve already met Maggie’s enthusiasm with a taciturn indifference, I can see why she wanted to live this moment through me. Now that I’ve dismissed my own graduation as not a big deal, I realize that it really is.
It’s still hard to feel super accomplished, and moving a dangling bunch of strings from one side of a funny hat to the other does not a new man make, but after the ceremony, walking up to my mom and seeing her eyes all messy and smiling, I can’t help but feel a little bit of pride in being the reason for that joy.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The Landlord's Daughter
As I was a ramble, down by the water,
I spied in sable the landlord’s daughter.
Produced my pistol, then my saber,
Said, “Make no whistle, or thou wilt be murder’d."
She cursed, she shiver’d, she cried for mercy;
“My gold and silver if thou wilt release me.”
“I’ll take no gold, miss. I’ll take no silver.
I’ll take those sweet lips, and thou wilt deliver!”
by the decemberists
I spied in sable the landlord’s daughter.
Produced my pistol, then my saber,
Said, “Make no whistle, or thou wilt be murder’d."
She cursed, she shiver’d, she cried for mercy;
“My gold and silver if thou wilt release me.”
“I’ll take no gold, miss. I’ll take no silver.
I’ll take those sweet lips, and thou wilt deliver!”
by the decemberists
Thursday, May 6, 2010
An E-mail From Maggie
subject: Conversation on the bus this morning
2-year-old: Old Capitol?
2-year-old: Old Capitol?
Me: Yes, do you see it?
2-year-old: (gets out rubber ducky from backpack, puts it down on the seat) Duck is riding Cambus, too.
From Grandma's email:
"Looking forward to coffee on the porch- my very best to you-your Mom and Dad, Stephan and Bryan--I have Bryan's card made- Congrats to him! Lots of love,Grandma B."
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About Me
- Bryan Adam
- Bryan is an English major at the University of Iowa, also dabbling in Spanish, Japanese, and Turkish.